Paul McCartney will play in Israel

I just read this about the “Cute Beatle”.

Despite several threats by extremists, Paul McCartney has refused to cancel an upcoming concert in Israel. He will go ahead with a gig in honour of the country’s 60th anniversary.

“I do what I think and I have many friends who support Israel,” McCartney told Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth this weekend.

His comments come in response to a Sunday Express interview with the militant Islamic activist Omar Bakri Muhammad. “If he values his life Mr McCartney must not come to Israel,” said Bakri, who has been barred from returning to the UK. “He will not be safe there. The sacrifice operatives will be waiting for him.”

After living in the UK for 20 years, the Syrian-born activist left in 2005 and now lives in Lebanon.

“Instead of supporting the people of Palestine in their suffering, McCartney is celebrating the atrocities of the occupiers,” Bakri said. “The one who is under occupation is supposed to be getting the help.”

Omar Barghouti, of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, called Bakri’s threat “deplorable”. And for his part McCartney seems unfazed. “I was approached by different groups and political bodies who asked me not to come here,” he said. “I refused.”

The September 25 concert in Tel Aviv will be McCartney’s first in the country. Although the Beatles had been scheduled to play there in 1965, the government cancelled the performance due to budget reasons and, per an official document, “because several politicians in the Knesset believed at the time that [their] performance might corrupt the minds of the Israeli youth”. The country recently issued an apology to the two surviving Beatles, McCartney and Ringo Starr.

article link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/sep/16/mccartney.refuses.to.cancel.gig

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